GOP aims to bolster Resources panel

Republican efforts to expand oil production on public lands, ramp up oversight of the Obama administration’s domestic energy policies and scale back efforts to expand national parks would begin in a committee that hasn't had much respect lately.

The House Natural Resources Committee has a broad jurisdiction – overseeing federal lands, oil and gas drilling policy, and endangered species laws, for starters – but hasn't flexed its muscles under the Democrats for the past four years.

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Republicans and energy lobbyists say that should change should the GOP take control.

“The Republicans have got to decide whether that committee should continue to be a parks and recreation committee or whether they should get their s—- together and be a powerhouse,” said an energy lobbyist close to the panel.

West Virginia Democrat Nick Rahall, the panel's chairman since 2007, has won kudos from the environmental community for his efforts to shepherd a host of wilderness bills through the committee and to overhaul federal onshore oil and gas and geothermal stream leasing systems. But he’s come under fire from the right for being too subservient to the environmental community and House leadership – namely Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah, in line to chair the Parks, Forests and Public Lands Subcommittee, said Rahall is a decent person, but he always got the feeling that the chairman “had limitations placed on him coming from the speaker’s office.”

Pelosi’s chief of staff, John Lawrence, was staff director of the Natural Resources Committee under former Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.) and a former Republican committee aide suggested that he may be pulling the strings of the committee from Pelosi’s office.

Other top committee Republicans complain that Rahall didn’t do enough to expand drilling and mineral extraction issues.

“In the 111th Congress, those issues have been punted to another day and consequently, the industry has been paralyzed,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah).

In order to become a powerhouse, the committee that oversees federal land and water policies, including national parks, national forests, wilderness areas, Indian reservations and BLM lands, may have to expand its jurisdiction.

The panel could be modeled after the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which oversees federal energy policy as well as federal lands, one lobbyist suggested.

Chaffetz said he would be in favor of taking some of the energy production jurisdiction that’s now held by the Energy and Commerce Committee. “There’s certainly more the committee could take on,” he said, adding, “Energy and Commerce has a full plate.”

The committee's issues aren't as "sexy or front page" as other committees," Chaffetz added, "but to those of us in the West, they're imperative."

“It is high time we began using the resources we were blessed with and use part of the royalties to develop alternative energy sources,” he said. “That means jobs in the U.S. and a cleaner world environment. We don't help the environment by sending jobs to countries that are not as protective of the environment as we are.”

Sources close to the committee say there have long been efforts in the House to hijack jurisdiction from Energy and Commerce and they’re rarely successful. And it’s unclear whether likely House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) would be interested in restructuring the committees.